Jurjen Luykx

Jurjen Luykx obtained his medical degree at Utrecht University in 2005. He was a visiting scholar and was trained in neurogenetics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2006/2007. In 2012 he finished his residency in psychiatry and has since held several clinical consultant positions at psychiatric hospitals in Arnhem and the Utrecht area. In March 2013 he obtained his PhD in neuropsychiatric genetics at Utrecht University. Starting February 1st, 2019 he heads the residency program at GGNet Mental Healthy in Apeldoorn, where he also sees outpatients suffering from a range of psychiatric disorders.

Education and positions in academia

Current: University Medical Center Utrecht Utrecht, The Netherlands
Human Neurogenetics Unit, Head of Program in Psychiatric Genetics 
2007 – 2013 University Medical Center Utrecht Utrecht
Ph.D. program (“Determinants of Neurotransmitters in Cerebrospinal Fluid and Plasma”)
2006 – 2007 University of California (UCLA) Los Angeles, USA
Program in Neurogenetics
1999 – 2005 Utrecht University Utrecht
Doctor of Medicine

Research line

We welcome master students with an interest in psychiatric genetics coming from different backgrounds. A lot of the work we do concerns biostatistics; some of the work also involves wet lab activities.With our lab of postdocs, PhD students, lab technicians, bioinformaticians we focus on the following projects:

• Targeted DNA and RNA sequencing in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
• Genetic overlap studies: ALS-schizophrenia, OCD-schizophrenia, metabolic traits-schizophrenia, and EEG-epilepsy
• Other genetic studies in psychiatric patients: PTSD-related phenotypes; Pathway analysis studies in schizophrenia; Genetics of clozapine use (www.clozinstudy.com); Genetics of antipsychotic-induced weight gain; Genetics of ECT responsiveness; EEG genomics.
• I am also country coordinator for the Prednisolone trial (placebo-controlled randomized trial studying the effects of prednisolone addition to antipsychotics), EULAST (European randomized controlled trial studying treatment effects of oral vs depot antipsychotics and pharmacogenetics in schizophrenia) and RAPSODI (trial into add-on of raloxifene vs. placebo in the treatment of schizophrenia).

Professional associations

• Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) - Eating Disorders working group & Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Tourette Syndrome working group & Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder working group & Substance Use Disorders steering committee & MDD working group & ENIGMA-EEG working group & ENIGMA-cortex working group

Highlighted publications

• B.D. Lin, A. Alkema, …. & J.J. Luykx. Assessing causal links between metabolic traits, inflammation and schizophrenia: a univariable and multivariable bidirectional Mendelian Randomization study (International Journal of Epidemiology, in press): using both univariate and multivariate MR we find evidence that dyslipidemia has a role in schizophrenia independent of medication status.

•J.J. Luykx, R. van der Spek, …., Annelien Bredenoord & Ger Palmboom. Unconsented genetic testing in psychiatry: an (almost) no go? (Lancet Psychiatry, 2019). 

• D. Schijven, J.H. Veldink & J.J. Luykx. Genetic cross-disorder analysis in psychiatry: from methodology to clinical utility (British Journal of Psychiatry, 2019): in this paper we discuss the ramifications and clinical implications of genetic cross-disorder research for patients and psychiatrists.

• R. McLaughlin, D. Schijven,….. & O. Hardiman / J.H. Veldink / J.J. Luykx (shared supervision). Genetic correlation between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and schizophrenia (Nature Communications, 2017): under my supervision the first evidence of genetic overlap between schizophrenia and ALS was discovered.

• M. Lancee, C.M.C. Lemmens, … & J.J. Luykx. Outcome reporting bias in trials investigating antipsychotic drugs (Translational Psychiatry, 2017): here, we demonstrated the nature and degree of outcome reporting bias in antipsychotics trials.

• J.J. Luykx, S.C. Bakker, et al. Genome-wide association study of NMDA receptor coagonists in human cerebrospinal fluid and plasma (Molecular Psychiatry, 2015): we outline the first genetic evidence of the involvement of schizophrenia risk genes in determining neurotransmitter coagonist levels in CSF.